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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: above estimate. On the other hand, during oscillations of level, which we
know this area has undergone, the surface may have existed for millions of
years as land, and thus have escaped the action of the sea: when deeply
submerged for perhaps equally long periods, it would, likewise, have
escaped the action of the coast-waves. So that in all probability a far
longer period than 300 million years has elapsed since the latter part of
the Secondary period.
I have made these few remarks because it is highly important for us to gain
some notion, however imperfect, of the lapse of years. During each of
these years, over the whole world, the land and the water has been peopled
by hosts of living forms. What an infinite number of generations, which
On the Origin of Species |
